The practical aspect of the school
readiness issue is difficult to overestimate: as soon as an internationally
adopted school-age child arrives, the concern for the proper school
placement arises and sometimes drags adoptive parents through a
traumatic experience. The right academic placement depends on what
is known as readiness for appropriate school experience.

School readiness is a set of competencies expected
in our society from children of a certain chronological age. It
has two aspects: cognitive (the ability to learn specific skills
and knowledge) and social (the capability to function socially in
school and to participate in shared/joint activities with others).
These two sides of school readiness do not always develop in harmony:
a child may be ready cognitively or language-wise, but may be immature
socially or vice-versa. School readiness is always a continuum (a
range) of competencies that may be roughly described as below average,
average, and above average in relation to the majority of the child's
peers. In fact, there are no selection criteria or universal tests,
or even commonly agreed-upon patterns of behaviors that allow us
to determine school readiness in a specific child. Legally, the
only requirement for the academic placement in the US is the chronological
age of the child; thus children must be 5 years old for kindergarten
entrance, 6 years old for the 1st grade, 7 years old for the 2nd,
and so on. Current options for those who are "not ready"
include:

Delayed entry to a kindergarten
or 1st grade

Retention for another year in
the same grade

Lower-grade attendance

Enrollment into "inclusion"
or "transitional" classes

Research and practice show that all these options
have their detriments as well as advantages. Thus, there is evidence
that delaying kindergarten until age six does not necessarily result
in the improvement of pre-academic skills, but may assist in terms
of social/behavioral functioning. For more detailed information,
please refer to the Bgcenter Online School for parents adopting
internationally at:http://www.bgcenterSchool.org

The complexity of the notion "readiness"
is multiplied in the case of an internationally adopted child. School
readiness means different things for children who have been adopted
at different ages. I will discuss only so-called "older"
adoptees: children of school age (6 and up). Some of them, even
if they are 7 or 8 years old, might not have been exposed to formal
schooling in their native countries. In Russia, for example, first
grade age is 7, not 6 as in the USA. For a number of reasons a child
may not be in school even at the age of 8 or older. On the other
hand, many who are older than 8 and who have had at least one or
two years in school may be surprisingly literate in their native
languages and may even be advanced in certain academic skills. General
information (in science, humanities, etc.) may be limited or just
different from school/parents expectations. Grapho-motor skills
(e.g. writing, drawing, copying) may be limited (due to the lack
of practice), or age-appropriate, or even advanced. Language development,
as a rule, is delayed. Social skills, motivation, and emotional
self-regulation may be immature. Cognitive skills may be age-appropriate
or immature as well. These are individual differences, varying from
child to child. Bilingual issues, loss of native language, communicative
versus cognitive language dilemma in learning English, cognitive
problems related to losing one language and acquiring another, behavior/emotional
problems related to adjustment - all these issues are typical for
this group of internationally adopted children.

Although international adoption on a mass scale in
the USA has a history of more than a decade, our school system has
not caught up yet, and school personnel are not always knowledgeable
about the specifics of international adoptees. School administrators
and teachers may often have incorrect assumptions, such as:

International adoptees are bilingual students and should be
taught according to the instructional methodology used for bilingual
children.

International adoptees are similar
to children from recent immigrant families and are to be placed
the same way academically

No testing can be done until
these children learn enough English; no remedial services are
possible until the child learns enough English

The only problem with international
adoptees is their detrimental past: give them a year or two of
a "normal" life and everything will be OK

ESL instruction for international
adoptees should be the same as for children from immigrant families;
no modification of methodology is needed

These and similar beliefs complicate the issue of
an appropriate school placement, initial evaluation, and eligibility
for remedial services for international adoptees even further. It
becomes more and more obvious that a shared understanding of these
children's needs by parents and educators is necessary as an intrinsic
part of parenting school age post-institutionalized children.

School placement of international adoptees:
by age or not by age?

Age-appropriate
placement is one of the most controversial, emotionally charged,
and contentious issues between parents and schools. At times there
is pressure from a school district to keep a child with his/her
age grade or to promote to the next grade in spite of the child's
obvious lack of readiness. School districts have a tendency to place
newly arrived internationally adopted school-aged children in a
class according to their chronological age. This is the customary
practice for children from immigrant families in the USA. Usually
it works just fine with immigrants, but may not be the right thing
for international adoptees. Sometimes a family pediatrician, when
not familiar with the school system, may recommend age-appropriate
placement based on the child's general health. However, age and
physical soundness are only two of many factors to be considered.
In this situation adoptive parents are
often confused and act on their "gut feelings" rather
than on the informed choice.

The outlook of schools (and some parents) for the
age-appropriate classroom usually includes the following arguments:

The child must be with his/her
peers because of social reasons: he/she has to role-model age
appropriate behavior; it is difficult to get along with classmates
who are two or more years younger, particularly in the middle
and high school years.

What is the purpose of holding
back from where a child ought to be chronologically? He or she
may not do well that first year or two, no matter what the placement
is.

Why artificially lower the requirements
for a child who has already lowered expectations for himself/herself
in an academic setting, and, after all, why not to give them a
chance to catch up with their peers?

In addition, when a school principal
insists on an age-to-grade correspondence, he or she may have
in mind some financial or logistic/bureaucratic considerations
that may have little to do with your child's educational needs.

Medical experts in international adoption suggest
that for each three to five months of living in an orphanage, we have
to subtract one month of linear growth for a child in terms of his/her
height, weight, and other physical indicators of development. It is
impossible, of course, to make the same exact comparison in terms
of emotional/cognitive/academic growth, but the analogy is strikingly
clear: life in an institution may lead to delays not only in physical
growth but to delays and distortions in cognitive abilities, emotional
development, and maturity with self-regulation. A post-institutionalized
child of a certain chronological age may be much younger developmentally
and functionally. Emotional, cognitive, and behavioral immaturity
is the "trademark" of post-institutionalized children. Many
of them behave like younger children, regulate their emotions and
motivation like younger children, and have cognitive skills and academic
knowledge like younger children. If this is the case with your child,
he or she should be placed with their real, not "ideal,"
cohorts.

In order to create an optimal learning
environment, we have to match the child's actual readiness with
the level of instruction and social requirements of the school grade.
Therefore, in considering an appropriate educational program for
a post-institutionalized child we have to take as a reference point
his/her actual developmental age and level of functioning. If the
actual level of cognitive, academic, and social/emotional functioning
is close to the child's chronological age, then age-appropriate
school placement is warranted. However, if this level is a year
or two below their chronological age, they are to be placed accordingly
to ensure a positive school experience, which is the prerequisite
for long term school success. Post-institutionalized internationally
adopted children, due to their past history, are particularly vulnerable
to stress associated with school performance. To expose them to
this stress on a level that they are not able to handle may result
in emotional/behavioral problems that adversely affect the whole
family. It is not right to start the life of a child newly arrived
in America with frustration and failure. As for the prospective
difficulties with socialization in high school, one parent said:
"We have to address our immediate school-related issues in
order to avoid further complication in the nearest future. Our children
always have a chance to skip a class to catch up with their chronological
age peers. Why should we worry about their socialization issues
in high school while they cannot read now, in the second grade?
We will cross this 'bridge' of peer socialization when we approach
it!"

School readiness issues and special education needs

In many cases the issue of readiness for an appropriate
school experience is confused with the issue of eligibility for
special education services. An international adoptee may not benefit
from mainstream age-appropriate schooling, not because of an issue
of readiness, but due to a specific learning/language disability
or pervasive developmental delay. Under these circumstances delays
in entering a kindergarten, being held back in the same grade, or
being placed in a lower grade may lead to many negative consequences:
merely retaining a child with a genuine educational disability may
not help him/her at all. Too often parents and school districts
alike prefer to use a notion of being "developmentally not
ready" instead of receiving a classification for special education.
The "wait-&-see" position is typical for many school
districts in relation to testing international adoptees for special
education services. We have to realize that if a child has an educationally
handicapping condition and no remediation, it is, in fact, a continuation
of the same educational neglect that this child was exposed to for
so long. In other words, although entry to formal schooling (kindergarten)
may be postponed for some solid reasons (health, severe language
delay, etc.), this "readiness" option must be contingent
on the availability of an extensive system of remedial services.
There is no "one-size-fits-all" recommendation, but the
general rule of thumb is the following: if a child is functioning
more than 3 years below his/her chronological age or a child has
specific identifiable disability, this child may need special education
services rather than retention or other "readiness" options.

Screening or full assessment of a newly arrived international
adoptee?

Probably the most effective approach
to the issue of proper school placement is an accurate psycho-educational
assessment of the child in his/her native language within the first
two to four weeks of arrival. Most adoptive parents do a thorough
medical evaluation on arrival, even if a child appears to be healthy,
because they understand the need for medical rehabilitation or prevention.
In regards to psychological, educational, and language assessments,
the situation is quite different. Though experience shows that properly
done assessments are extremely important for your child's overall
adjustment, emotional well-being, and future educational progress,
these are still exceptions rather than the rule. There are several
reasons for that. One is that too often adoptive parents rely on
a physician's "clean bill of health" and assume that a
physically healthy child should not have any problems in school.
Another is that even when the adoptive parents truly understand
the importance of an assessment, school districts assume a "wait-and-see"
attitude, rejecting a request for evaluation "until the child
learns more English." To make things even more complicated,
there are no clearly stated requirements or procedures regarding
school-related screening or full assessment of internationally adopted
children. Who can provide these evaluations (what are the professionals'
qualifications)? When does an evaluation have to be done? What kind
of evaluation is necessary? What methods and procedures are to be
used? The lack of such guidelines makes it difficult for parents
to insist that schools honor their requests. This topic is too important
to limit it to a brief talk now, and I hope to continue this discussion
in the future. For those parents who need this information immediately,
I have compiled a set of rules and guidelines based on the best
available practices in the initial assessment and screening of internationally
adopted children. This information is available at:http://www.bgcenter.com
and at http://www.bgcenterSchool.org.
An adoptive parent can bring this information
to the school district to request a timely and meaningful assessment,
which will lead to proper school placement and remedial services
when needed.

There are three basic types of school-related evaluations:

Screening is the initial evaluation
of a child and his/her medical/educational records to aid early
detection of any possible school-related issues. Screening can
focus your decision-making process about school placement It may
lead to a full assessment or a specialized evaluation, but by
itself it is a relatively short and inexpensive procedure with
limited goals and scope. Many internationally adopted children
need just screening

Full assessment is a comprehensive,
detailed, and focused evaluation with a range of goals and a wide
assortment of clinical instruments and procedures. Full assessment
often takes several sessions to complete and results in a clinical
report

Specialized evaluation is a
domain-specific examination, concentrating on a specified function
such as speech and language, fine-motor skills, auditory processing,
etc. It is normally requested after a screening or full assessment
in order to clarify a particular issue

The general rule regarding the
above types of evaluations is this: if a child has a "red flag"
in his/her developmental history (potentially threatening medical
diagnoses, alarming descriptions of functioning (e.g.: "delay
in psychological and language development"), such notations
as "oligophrenia" or "speech impairment/delay,"
or a history of residency in a specialized orphanage and attendance
in a special school - then the full or specialized assessment is
a must. Any delays with such an assessment may result in narrowing
the window of opportunity for remediation and a further consolidation
of deficits. If a child does not have "red flags" in his/her
documentation and you or your pediatrician do not suspect any potential
difficulties in school, a screening will be sufficient to root out
hidden troubles and to establish a baseline for the child's current
level of functioning. It may bring you peace of mind and prevent
many unexpected predicaments in the future.

Be pro-active in requesting screening
or a full evaluation for your child. Investigate your school district's
recourses in providing proper psycho-educational and language assessment
in your child's native language. Write a letter to your school requesting
bilingual language and psycho-educational evaluations.
Be aware of the incorrect assumptions your school may have in regards
to international adoptees and the school's usual policies of placing
children according to their chronological age. Prepare to educate
educators: provide them with copies of articles and Internet links
related to international adoption and post-adoption educational
issues. When the results of evaluation/screening are available for
your examination, try to distinguish between "readiness"
options and special education needs for your child. Based on the
above information, try to determine the most optimal school placement
for your child. Discuss your findings with your school authorities
and a specialist in the psycho-educational evaluation of internationally
adopted children. A consultation and screening with a psycho-educational
professional specializing in international adoption would be the
best thing to do if such specialist is available. Most important,
educate and prepare yourself.